Gabe Cole Novoa

There were things I liked about this book and found helpful, and things I definitely didn't like.

Of the good, Story Genius pushed me to dig deeper into my characters in pre-writing than I usually do, and I found the exercise to be pretty helpful for brainstorming before I dive back into my partially-written WIP. It helped me generate some new ideas and make some connections where things were previously fuzzy.

That said, this book was very prescriptivist in a way I didn't appreciate. I'm always very leery of writing advice that claims a “my way or the highway” approach, and it was very critical of pantsers in a way that—even though I'm not a pantser—irked me. Much of the advice was wrapped in “you must do this or you will fail” type pressure which was not only unnecessary but obviously not true. No one writing technique works for everyone.

It also uncritically quoted Joyce Carol Oats (insert eyeroll emoji) and ended with a weird send off that claimed Harper Lee was hugely influential in the success of the civil rights movement with To Kill a Mockingbird? It was an odd, white savior-y way to end a book that was entirely unnecessary and left me frowning at the final pages.

So overall, this was okay. I'd say if you read it, only do so if you're able to ignore the prescriptivist pressure. There's some useful stuff in here, but it's not a book I'm going to recommend without caveats.

Insurgent is a fantastic (if not slightly infuriating—but in a good way) sequel. One of my favorite aspects about the Divergent trilogy is the characters—they're complicated and layered, make (plenty) of mistakes and have their own flaws and struggles to deal with. As a bonus, Roth doesn't rely on the traditional love triangle seen so often in YA novels—instead, she chooses to explore the complexities and difficulties of a relationship, which turned out to be very effective (and also often the source of the aforementioned frustration).

For those of you who have read Divergent and haven't yet picked up the sequel, I highly recommend it, and for anyone else who enjoys well-written dystopian YA books, I can't recommend this trilogy enough.

Eh. I'll go with GR's translation of two stars: it was okay. Slow to start, slow to finish. At least I can say I've read it now.

Not my favorite read. The characters and their stories were interesting enough, but the writing style and voice just wasn't my cup of tea.

I have many feels about this book and that ending and they can be properly summed up with 😊